Close and high-speed overtaking of vulnerable road users (VRUs) remains a significant road safety concern, particularly for cyclists and horse riders. The present study evaluated whether short videos incorporating mindfulness techniques could improve drivers’ emotions, attitudes and intended behaviours toward these road users. A randomised controlled trial was conducted with 323 UK drivers. Participants were assigned to either a four-week mindfulness-video intervention, viewing one video per week of less than five minutes duration, or a control condition featuring road-safety videos unrelated to VRUs. Pre- and post-intervention measures assessed attitudes, emotions, intended overtaking behaviour, and self-reported unsafe and aggressive behaviours. The mindfulness-trained group reported significantly greater reductions in anticipated frustration toward cyclists, more positive attitudes toward cyclists, lower intentions to engage in unsafe passing behaviours, and lower intended overtaking speeds when passing both cyclists and horse riders. Participants liked the videos and many were willing to apply the mindfulness techniques in future driving situations. These findings suggest that brief mindfulness-based video interventions offer a promising and scalable approach for improving drivers’ interactions with vulnerable road users, particularly cyclists, although future research should assess longer-term and real-world behavioural effects.

Multiple different factors often collude to precipitate traffic collisions, yet most driver-based interventions focus on a single factor (fatigue, hazard perception skills, etc.) limiting the opportunities for positive outcomes on real roads. One possible intervention that has the potential to tackle multiple contributory causes to collisions is mindfulness training. Epitomised by ‘presence in the moment’, a state of mindfulness has been noted to improve a range of cognitive factors, emotional stability, and task focus, thus offering a multi-factor intervention for driver safety. To assess the impact of mindfulness driving on driver behaviour we undertook three randomised control trials, assessing the impacts of the intervention via a battery of laboratory tests and on-road data collection. Across the three studies, our mindfulness-trained drivers showed numerous benefits when compared to a control group who had undergone a comparable car maintenance course. These included, reductions in reported anger, reduced mind wandering, reduced speed variance in a simulator, and an increase in responses to hazards. On road data suggested that mindfulness-trained participants were less likely to break the UK National Speed Limit and had fewer instances of harsh acceleration. Together, these results suggest that mindfulness training can improve driver behaviours that underly a range of potential collision causes, arguing for greater use of mindfulness training in educational courses for drivers.

Young drivers are over-represented in collision statistics partly because pre-licensure training does not fully provide young drivers with all the necessary skills to be safe on the road. Despite this, post-licensure on-road training does not appear popular with young drivers, even when offered for free. To investigate their appetite for training we surveyed 745 young drivers, and asked whether they would be willing to engage with a hypothetical free training course (based on a real course). Less than a third of the sample reported they would be likely to engage with training 'at the moment', though acceptance rates were higher when asked if there would have been likely to sign up 'in the past' or 'in the future'. Proportional odds logistical regression models suggested that reasons to avoid training included the admission that they 'would rather do something else' with their time, and that they 'did not need training'. Factors that would increase their engagement with training included 'the reputation of the training company', 'an understanding of why the course is offered for free', and 'a certificate of participation'. When asked whether there was any specific training that they felt would benefit them, responses highlighted difficult driving conditions (e.g., snow, ice) and new technology (e.g., electric vehicles, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). Recommendations are made to design post-licensure training interventions that will increase young driver engagement.

Some car drivers pass vulnerable road users (VRUs) at too high a speed and leave too little gap. Research suggests that out-group bias and a lack of empathy may relate to these dangerous incidents. To address this problem, four road safety videos were created with the aim of increasing car drivers' empathy toward Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). Each video focused on the back-story of a VRU (two horse riders and two cyclists), with a predominantly persuasive approach to inducing empathy and reducing out-group bias. The effectiveness of the videos on car drivers' immediate implicit and explicit attitudes, and on their future intended behaviour around these VRUs, was assessed by comparing intervention participants' responses with those of control participants, both before and after the intervention. Explicit attitudes towards horse riders improved following the intervention for drivers who saw the horse rider videos compared to a control group. The horse rider videos did not however improve explicit attitudes toward cyclists. Similarly, those participants who saw the cyclist videos showed improved attitudes towards cyclists but not horse riders. An Implicit Attitude Test (IAT) found no implicit biases for or against horse riders or cyclists, either before or after the intervention. Intended future passing behaviour was affected by the intervention however, with car drivers reporting greater intended passing distances and lower passing speeds compared to the control group. The results suggest that safety campaigns that adopt this approach can change attitudes and intended behaviours towards VRUs.

A survey asked autistic and non-autistic people about the driving difficulties they experience and their autistic traits. Principle components analysis was used to identify how reported difficulties clustered together in each group, and regression was used to determine which subscales of the Autism Spectrum Quotient predict these factors. For autistic drivers three factors of driving difficulty emerged: a Driving Executive factor, predicted by Attention Switching; a Driving Understanding factor, predicted by Communication; and a Driving Social Interaction factor, predicted by Attention Switching. For non-autistic drivers only one Driving General factor emerged, predicted by Communication. This suggests autistic people may experience at least three distinct domains of difficulty when driving which may relate to their particular profile of autistic features.

Eight patients with psoriasis, all with skin scales and 7 with disabling psoriatic arthritis, were subjected to cascade apheresis starting with three treatments per week for 2 weeks, followed by one treatment a week, comprising ten treatments in all. Six out of 7 patients (86%) with arthropathy and 3 out of 8 patients (38%) with scales experienced a beneficial effect. There was a large drop in the levels of circulating immune complexes (CIC) due to the treatment, and the removal of CIC was followed by reduced inflammatory activity in skin lesions and joints as evaluated by pain, morning stiffness, grip strength, plaque score, and PASI index. However, there was no correlation between the level of CIC, disease activity, or treatment response. From the present results it is concluded that CIC may play a more significant role regarding psoriatic arthropathy than in skin manifestations, and apheresis may be beneficial in patients not responding to conventional therapy.

Touchscreen human-machine interfaces (HMIs) are commonly employed as the primary control interface and touch-point of vehicles. However, there has been very little theoretical work to model the demand associated with such devices in the automotive domain. Instead, touchscreen HMIs intended for deployment within vehicles tend to undergo time-consuming and expensive empirical testing and user trials, typically requiring fully functioning prototypes, test rigs, and extensive experimental protocols. While such testing is invaluable and must remain within the normal design/development cycle, there are clear benefits, both fiscal and practical, to the theoretical modeling of human performance. We describe the development of a preliminary model of human performance that makes a priori predictions of the visual demand (total glance time, number of glances, and mean glance duration) elicited by in-vehicle touchscreen HMI designs, when used concurrently with driving. The model incorporates information theoretic components based on Hick-Hyman Law decision/search time and Fitts' Law pointing time and considers anticipation afforded by structuring and repeated exposure to an interface. Encouraging validation results, obtained by applying the model to a real-world prototype touchscreen HMI, suggest that it may provide an effective design and evaluation tool, capable of making valuable predictions regarding the limits of visual demand/performance associated with in-vehicle HMIs, much earlier in the design cycle than traditional design evaluation techniques. Further validation work is required to explore the behavior associated with more complex tasks requiring multiple screen interactions, as well as other HMI design elements and interaction techniques. Results are discussed in the context of facilitating the design of in-vehicle touchscreen HMI to minimize visual demand.

The current study explored attentional processing of social and non-social stimuli in ASD within the context of a driving hazard perception task. Participants watched videos of road scenes and detected hazards while their eye movements were recorded. Although individuals with ASD demonstrated relatively good detection of driving hazards, they were slower to orient to hazards. Greater attentional capture in the time preceding the hazards' onset was associated with lower verbal IQ. The findings suggest that individuals with ASD may distribute and direct their attention differently when identifying driving hazards.

Background: Previous research suggests people with ASD may have various difficulties in processing and interacting with motion in the environment. We investigated whether individuals with ASD have difficulty judging the location of moving objects in a driving context using a time-to-arrival task.Methods: Participants with and without ASD viewed scenes that simulated self-motion towards a junction, while another car approached on a side road. Scenes terminated prior to either car reaching the junction and participants were required to decide which car would reach the junction first.Results: Participants with ASD made fewer correct responses although this was only true when self-motion was on a straight road.Conclusions: This difficulty in judging the location of moving objects could contribute to difficulties people with ASD experience in learning to drive. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Background: Little is known about the impact of cognitive impairments on driving in adults with ADHD. The present study compared the performance of adults with and without ADHD in a driving simulator on two different routes: an urban route which we hypothesised would exacerbate weak impulse control in ADHD and a motorway route, to challenge deficits in sustained attention.Methods: Adults with (n = 22, 16 males) and without (n = 21, 18 males) ADHD completed a simulated driving session while eye movement data were recorded simultaneously. Participants also completed the Manchester Driving Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) and the Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scale (CAARS). Measures of driving performance included average speed, proportion distance travelled over speed limit (speeding) and lane deviation. These variables and the eye movement measures (spread of fixations, mean fixation duration) were compared between groups and routes. Also, driving behaviours, including responses to programmed events, were categorised and the frequencies within categories were compared between groups. Finally, speech analysis was performed to compare emotional verbal expressions during driving between groups.Results: ADHD participants reported significantly more Violations and Lapses on the DBQ than control participants and significantly more accidents. Average speed and speeding were also higher but did not interact with route type. ADHD participants showed poorer vehicle control, greater levels of frustration with other road users (including greater frequencies of negative comments) and a trend for less safe driving when changing lanes/overtaking on the motorway. These effects were predicted by hyperactive/impulsive CAARS scores. They were also more likely to cause a crash/near miss when an event occurred on the urban route.Conclusions: The results suggest that difficulty regulating and controlling impulsive behavior, reflected in speeding, frustration with other road users, less safety when changing lanes on the motorway and a greater likelihood of an accident following an unexpected event, underlie impaired driving in ADHD. Hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms correlated with these indices. Deficits in sustained attention seemed to play a lesser role in this particular study, although further research is needed to determine whether effects on attention emerge over longer periods of time and/or are influenced by the novelty of the simulator environment.

Driver distraction is a major contributor to road traffic accidents. Consequently, NHTSA have published detailed guidelines intended to discourage the introduction of excessively distracting electronic devices in vehicles. However, concerns have been raised regarding the theoretical basis and ecological validity of the NHTSA Eye Glance Testing Using a Driving Simulator (EGDS) testing protocol. In particular, it has been noted that the driving scenario is over-simplified and acceptance is predicated on absolute measures determined from a poorly defined and out-dated reference task ('radio-tuning'). Using a medium-fidelity driving simulator, a new prototype touchscreen interface was evaluated in full compliance with the NHTSA EGDS test protocol. As a comparison, the same interface was then tested using a well-established ('standard') driving scenario. Results show that the different scenarios elicited significantly different visual behaviour with drivers placing more emphasis (extended TEORT and MGD) on secondary task performance during the NHTSA scenario. Furthermore, driving performance measures indicated higher levels of 'presence' associated with the 'standard' environment. Conclusions are drawn regarding the effect of primary task demand on secondary task performance and NHTSA-compliance, and the validity of the proposed test scenario and reference task.

Right of way violation crashes are the most common type of accidents that motorcyclists face. This study assessed right of way decisions in scenarios which require noticing whether there is traffic from behind that is about to overtake. A test was created which presents participants clips with a wide field of vision (from a driver's perspective in a moving vehicle), with mirror information inset that allows either cars or motorcycles that are about to overtake, to be attended. Novice and experienced car drivers, and dual drivers (with both car and motorcycle experience), watched these clips while their eye movements were monitored. The results indicated that in the rear-view and the right-side mirrors, and in the right hand lane, conflicting motorcycles garnered more attention than conflicting cars. This pattern however was particularly driven by the dual drivers group. Additionally, novice drivers and dual drivers made more use of the right side mirror than the experienced drivers. Dual drivers also made more use of the rear view mirror than experienced drivers. Finally, significant positive correlations that were found between percentages of safe manoeuvres and measures of visual search provide direct evidence demonstrating that the frequency of risky manoeuvres was indeed larger in those cases where less time was spent gazing at the mirrors, indicating that the additional attention devoted to process conflicting vehicles contributes to reduce risky manoeuvres. The general pattern of results also provides some indirect support that non-motorcyclists drivers are more likely to have Look But Fail To See errors with conflicting motorcycles than motorcyclist drivers.

Studies of hazard perception skills in car drivers suggest that the ability to spot hazards improves with driving experience. Is this the case with motorcyclists? Sixty-one motorcyclists, split across three groups (novice, experienced and advanced riders) were tested on a hazard perception test containing video clips filmed from the perspective of a motorcyclist. Response times to hazards revealed that the advanced riders (who had completed an advanced riding course) were the fastest, and the experienced riders were the slowest to respond to hazards, with novice riders falling in-between. Advanced riders were also found to make more internal attributions regarding the causes of the hazards than novice riders (though on a general measure of Locus of Control there was no difference between groups). The results demonstrate a link between advanced training and motorcycling hazard perception skill, but raise important concerns about the effects of mere experience on rider safety. This challenges previous conceptions that simply extrapolated from our understanding of the hazard perception skills of car drivers to this particularly vulnerable group of road users.

In order to compare groups of road users who have fundamentally different skills, attitudes and behaviours, one of the first in-depth motorcycle simulation studies of its kind was conducted. The project was developed using the innovative ‘MotorcycleSim’ simulator designed and built at the University of Nottingham. The simulator is a research tool to investigate aspects of motorcycle ergonomics and rider human factors and is the first of its kind in the world to incorporate ‘STI-SIM Drive’ software that allows motorcyclists to ride a full size motorcycle and interact with a virtual riding environment (VRE). To build a simulator that was both fit for the purpose of research and provided the desired levels of fidelity associated with real world riding, a user-centred design process was adopted from the outset (based in principles of ISO:13407).

The ability to detect hazards in video clips of driving has been inconsistently linked to driving experience and skill. One potential reason for the lack of consistency is the failure to understand the structural differences between those hazards that discriminate between safe and unsafe drivers, and those that do not. The current study used a car simulator to test drivers of differing levels of experience on approach to a series of hazards that were categorized a priori according to their underlying structure. The results showed that learner drivers took longer to fixate hazards, although they were particularly likely to miss hazards that were obscured by the environment (such as a pedestrian emerging from behind a parked truck). While drivers with a moderate amount of experience were as fast as driving instructors to look at hazards, they spent the greatest amount of time looking at them. Only instructors’ ability to detect hazards early in the approach translated into differences in driving speed for certain types of hazard. The results demonstrate that drivers of varying experience respond differently to different hazards, and lay the foundations for a hazard typology.